Polaris

Polaris has visited Oman to help promote the 300th drydocking at Oman Drydock Company, one of the newest and biggest shipyards in the world.

The multi-million dollar contract saw the Greek owned Oil Bulk Ore carrier, the Olympic Luck, converted to a VLCC.(Supertanker) The ship is owned by Springfield Shipping and the Onassis Foundation. Polaris directors Ben and Sam Pinnington attended the special ceremony to mark the event at ODC which is run in partnership with Korean shipbuilder DSME.

Polaris is one of the companies who are registered onto the New Markets and Export Growth programme with the Chamber which is providing some funding to support them with their overseas travel to explore and expand their export business.

Virtus Projects

Virtus Projects was the 100th company to benefit from the programme.

Specialising in the creation and sales of eco-friendly concrete blocks, Virtus Projects uses state of the art technology to manufacture specialised building materials for the transport, construction and agriculture sector and has been recognised by the Environment Agency’s strategy for flood and land defence.

Throughout their involvement in the programme, the company have explored the opportunity of manufacturing their innovative building formula and equipment worldwide and are now looking into exporting their technologies in license and royalty payments. Virtus have utilised the various aspects of the project to meet overseas clients and develop their international brand and they have already received interest from companies in Dubai and USA who could benefit from manufacturing BlockWalls™ onsite.

Commenting on the programme, Jonathan Quinn, CEO of Virtus Projects:

“We have spent a great deal of time investing in our product and following an intense period of research and development, we felt it was ready to become a market leader both here and abroad. Working with Simona at the Chamber has meant we could attend workshops to understand various markets whilst sourcing vital funding opportunities to help prepare and travel on trade missions.

Exporting can be an intimidating experience for the most experienced of businesses and we recognised that there could be obstacles along the way; language barriers, limited expertise in overseas technology and the other big issue of not being able to connect with a client face to face proved to be understandably difficult at first.

However, the programme was specifically designed to address all these problems in a structured and simple way; in the first few weeks, we had internationalised our website and sourced reliable overseas clients, including one of the world’s wealthiest multi-faceted energy companies who are currently building Masdar City UAE, an ambitious construction project which uses low carbon principles to power a whole city. Thanks to the programme, we accessed the funds to meet with their CEO, Ahmed Yandar, who was interested in using our geomix to build the city’s sustainable walls.

We could never have made such quick progress if we hadn’t received expert support from the Chamber. Understanding the possibilities of exporting has not only made us a more sustainable business but it has enabled us to make an ongoing and vital contribution to the safeguarding of our global environment. I’d recommend any business to speak to the international team as soon as possible because as an exporter, nothing can limit your progress as a business.”